This invention relates generally to event notifications in online systems, and more particularly to providing notifications to multiple user devices associated with an online system user.
Many online systems include a notification system to notify users of the online system when events occur. For example, when a user of a social networking system receives a message or is identified in a post, a notification system of the social networking system transmits a notification of the event to the user. Notifications may be sent to multiple devices associated with a user. Hence, when a user accesses the online system using a single user device, the single user device receives the notification. But when users access the online system using multiple user devices, all of the user devices are typically notified of a generated notification at approximately the same time. This results in notifications being sent to user devices that may not be used by the user. Additionally, the user must acknowledge or remove the notification from each user device individually, causing the user to repetitively view notifications for the same event on multiple user devices.